


The Other Side

by WritingScribe



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-17
Updated: 2017-02-17
Packaged: 2018-09-25 05:19:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9804233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingScribe/pseuds/WritingScribe
Summary: The Norse gods are alive and kicking - it's just that nobody knows it. Well, not nobody at all. Just nobody on this side. The other side, however, is a different story.When Clint Barton makes a deal with a Norse god known as Thor - his soul in exchange for his friend's life - he doesn't realise that he has now joined the other side: a place where the Norse gods are real, but are known as Entities. A place where it is possible to travel to different worlds and see things that most other people only dream of seeing. He adapts to his new life fairly quickly and finally feels at home, despite the danger he faces on a daily basis; until one day Thor returns and offers Clint his soul back in exchange for a favour.





	

I sold my soul to the devil ages ago. I guess that’s not how one normally starts a story; everyone knows the tale of Faustus and you’d think that by now we would have learned our lesson, but apparently not. Now hey, don't judge me. I had a really good reason for doing what I did. Maybe that’s where I should start.

 

My name is Clint Barton and I have lived everywhere. When I was young, my brother and I ran away from home to join the circus. I know, it sounds like every kid’s dream come true. It wasn’t. Circus life is _hard_. It takes a lot out of you, especially when you’re as young as we were then. It’s always much more impressive to see kids doing what adults don’t even dream of and as the youngest in the group, we were worked harder than anyone else. This continued until my brother ran away. If I’m being completely honest, I’m surprised he lasted as long as he did. He was always a flight risk, but I thought he’d stay for me. I was wrong.

We used to live on a farm, where I developed a fascination with archery. It drove my father up the wall, but I didn’t really care. It was the one thing that made me happy in that god-forsaken house and when we got to the circus, that was what they picked up on. Well, that and my deafness. They never told the crowd that I couldn’t hear, of course. Instead, they’d have me shoot while there were loud noises going off around me, showing how nothing could break my concentration. Anything to get a bit more money, right?

Well not long after my brother left, this guy showed up outside my trailer. I was wary of him at first. He was dressed in a suit and had dark glasses on, even though the sun had just gone down. I kept him out of my trailer at first, but then he mentioned how he had been watching the show and wanted to talk to me about my skills. I was flattered. Nobody ever singled me out for good reasons, so I let him in I shouldn’t have done it. I should have said no. I should have gone back into my trailer without bothering to watch him walk away. Maybe if I had done that, none of this would have happened.

 

He said his name was Phil Coulson and he was from SHIELD academy. I could never remember what SHIELD stood for; it was something ridiculously long and complicated and definitely not worth memorising when it had such a cool acronym. Coulson was there on behalf of some guy called Nick Fury who was the director of SHIELD. He explained to me how the world as we see it doesn’t exist. How there are layers and layers of technology and magic – yes, magic – covering up the truth from us. I told him he was mad. The things that he was telling me about were completely impossible. Apparently Norse gods were real, but not. They were based on some sort of other-worldly creatures that some people in our world would call demons. That’s important. Remember that. He told me that these demon-things (he called them Entities) could possess and control people. That they could buy your soul from you (Again, important.) He carried on like this and it was all I could do just to pay attention. I mean, Coulson hadn’t seemed crazy at first, but then, appearances were deceiving. Still, he wasn’t angry when I told him he was insane. Instead, he smiled and asked if I wanted a demonstration. I shrugged and nodded. Magic didn’t exist. Nothing was going to happen. Boy was I wrong.

As soon as I nodded, he stood up. I thought that he was going to at least wave his hands at me or something, but he didn’t. Instead, he walked past me to the door and opened it. A moment later there was another man in my house, this one so much weirder than Coulson. He was wearing a long red cape that, even though there was no wind in the room, shifted around him. The cloak was accompanied by a pair of yellow gloves and one of the most bizarrely cool outfits I had ever seen. And I was part pf a circus. It turned out that this new guy, Doctor Stephen Strange, was the one doing the demonstration. He stepped in front of me and stared at me for a long time, long enough for it to become uncomfortable, before he nodded once, sharply, and touched my forehead.

I wish I could explain what I went through. It was an awakening and an overload at the same time. It was everything and nothing. It was forever and it was never. When it finally ended, I believed Coulson. I listened to everything he had to say and readily agreed to join him. I had left the circus by the very next morning.

A few years passed at SHIELD quite happily. I was an archery teacher at the academy and had yet to have my high score beaten on the practice range. I had even helped to recruit someone else, a young woman who asked us to call her Natasha. Everything was going great. Until Phil died.

 

It was a pretty routine mission. I was out with Phil, because while I had been training the others, I had been learning how to deal with this new life myself. Phil had been my handler right from the start and once Natasha had joined us, we became an almost undefeatable team. I guess that’s what made us cocky. Nat and I would go out and Phil would have our backs, covering us and making sure we stayed on book. That last part didn’t really work and we would sometimes go out in pairs rather than the standard trio. That was what happened that night. Nat had taken a bad fall that afternoon and Coulson insisted she stay back and rest, so it was just the two of us on patrol. It was nearly our third hour and we were getting a bit impatient when everything went to shit. One minute the road had been empty and the next there were hundreds, if not thousands of these humanoid things swarming all around us. I was loosing arrows as fast as I could, but it wasn’t enough. The things just kept coming. In fact, I was so focused on my own task that I almost missed _it_. I was fast running out of arrows and while I’m pretty good at hand-to-hand combat, against this, it would be useless. So I shouted to Phil that I would have to go and fetch them, waiting for his acknowledgement before darting off. I had already spied out several easy to reach ones that would bring me into the least contact with the things and I grabbed them as quickly as I could. It just wasn’t quick enough. I had just ducked into the side of a building, debating whether or not what I had would be enough when movement caught my eye. It shouldn’t have; the entire vicinity was swarming with those things, but this movement was different somehow, so I turned my head to watch it… and instead ended up staring helplessly as Phil was stabbed through the back. I screamed. I know I did because there was no way I could have watched that and not, but I didn’t hear it. It didn’t hear anything, or see anything, except for that blade that pierced my friend’s heart. I don’t know how I got to Phil’s side. I don’t remember moving, but the next thing I knew, I was sitting beside him, cradling his body in my lap. The things that were attacking us had disappeared when Phil’s murderer did, but I’ll never forget his face. It was then that I screamed for help, begging anyone and everyone for assistance. And it came. If I had been in a batter frame of mind, I might have thought that I hadn’t expected him, but I didn’t care. I just wanted Phil to live. My soul seemed like an insignificant price in exchange.

 

So there you go. You now know the story of how and why I sold my soul. But that’s not the interesting part. That’s not even the beginning. That’s just context. The real story starts when the Entity offered me my soul back and asked for a favour.


End file.
